HOW TO RUN AND HOW I CURED MY PLANTAR FASCIITIS

  

 

FIGURE 1: A STEP-BY-STEP DESCRIPTION SHOWING IN GREEN WHAT PART OF THE FOOT GRABS THE GROUND AT EACH STEP OF THE CYCLE.

 

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE IS MEANT FOR BAREFOOT & HUARACHE RUNNERS ONLY

 

RUNNING EFFICIENCY MECHANICS  

By leaning slightly forward, your center of gravity inevitably forces your legs to step in, to prevent you from falling. If you aim those steps in a way that allows the body’s fascia to coil and uncoil like a spring, your running efficiency increases in orders of magnitude. Aiming your steps in a specific manner initially requires total focus and concentration. Yet, over time the body takes to it naturally. Below is a step-by-step description of how to aim those relatively “forced” steps, in a way that achieves higher running efficiency. 

STEP MECHANICS 

While keeping your center of gravity forward, make sure your shoulders are fully frontally facing, and swing your arms back and forth as if you were throwing punches in coordination with the opposite foot you switch into, as you step into the following cycle:

1. As your foot touches the ground, the hip over it should align with the big toe (as seen from your perspective)  

2. The flatter the foot is as it lands, the greater the pivoting leverage achievable from raising the arch’s OUTER EDGE, 

3. Purposely aligning your landings on an imaginary mid-line traced on the ground in front of you, makes it considerably easier to repeat the cycle, than if you allow each foot to land along their individual shoulder-width imaginary lines  

4. Increasing the number of cycle-repeats (higher cadence), radically increases your running speed 

IN DETAIL  

1. Aim to hit the ground’s mid-line in front of you, on your foot’s mid heel’s OUTER EDGE. (see Figure 1, above).
   

2. The foot strikes nearly FLAT on the ground and “moves” forward only by pivoting up the arch while rolling from the outer edge towards the ball of the foot & big toe (INSIDE EDGE), as if it were pinned on the ground.  

3. As you pivot up the arch, while transferring your body weight from OUTER EDGE to INSIDE EDGE, aim to squeeze the ground under your foot, this turns the knee inward, as the foot reaches the top of its arch and allows you to “spring forward off” the ground from the big toe. 

4. By the time the tip of ​​your big toe has taken off, your other foot is about to strike the ground on its OUTER EDGE so that it can repeat the same cycle, as it starts it all over again, but on the opposite foot.
   

 

PLANTAR FASCIITIS (REALLY FASCIOSIS) 

Long story short if you wear shoes from the time you are a toddler until after adolescence you are now saddled with an atrophy of the tendon that connects your big toe with the heel. Getting that tendon fully functioning again takes two to three months of walking barefoot and using toe separators such as these for a couple of hours a day until you can eventually use them for walking, but that will take a least two more months of wearing them for a few hours and performing daily your toe-spreading exercises, until you can begin running again (2-3 months). For further details and daily running inspiration, you're welcome to join our Huarache Runners club.